Rubio, Republican Dream VP, Won’t Fix Party Woes: Jonathan Alter

Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- With Newt Gingrich’s surge, the
Republican presidential race is more uncertain than ever. But
the party’s pick for vice president has for months seemed like a
foregone conclusion.

Although he claims to have no interest in the job, Florida
Senator Marco Rubio is still the most likely VP choice for any
Republican nominee, especially Gingrich, who has mentioned Rubio
specifically.

Rubio is young, bright, handsome and from a critical swing
state that he carried in 2010 by nearly 20 points. Most
important, he’s Hispanic. He doesn’t have to help Republicans
win Hispanics outright, but merely cut into the Democrats’
mammoth advantage. The Obama campaign knows that if the
president, who won 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008, can
be held below 60 percent this time, he’s almost sure to lose.

But in truth, Rubio is not the ideal vice-presidential
candidate to solve Republicans’ trouble with Hispanics. Cuban-Americans have a big voice in Florida politics (where they
already vote Republican) but make up only 4 percent of Hispanics
nationwide. Mexican-Americans make up 66 percent of Hispanics,
and tapping their potential at the polls may determine the
results in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and
New Mexico.

There’s no evidence that a Cuban-American who opposes even
the DREAM Act (which would create a path to citizenship for
children of illegal immigrants who finish high school and join
the military or attend college) will bring other Hispanics out
to vote or get them to switch parties.

A better option for Republicans might be New Mexico
Governor Susana Martinez, but party operatives tell me that
after Sarah Palin they aren’t likely to bet again on a new and
obscure female governor.

Two Flaps

So Rubio sits atop the short list. This should have
Republicans worried, and not just because Rubio arrived in the
Senate less than a year ago and carries the risks of any rookie.
He’s been scuffed up in two flaps this year that highlight the
complexities of being a minority of an ethnic minority in a
party that’s shooting itself in the foot with minorities.

First, the Washington Post reported in October that he
“embellished” his background by falsely claiming throughout his
political career that his parents fled Cuba after Fidel Castro’s
Communist takeover in 1959. The article said Rubio’s parents in
fact came from Cuba to Miami in 1956. At first glance, that
might not seem like a big deal. And Rubio claimed there was no
“functional difference” between the two dates in his heroic
family story. “The essence of the story was not the date,” he
told the Miami Herald.

Except that it was. Those Cubans who came to the U.S. in
1956 when Cuba, under Fulgencio Batista, was still a close
American ally were economic immigrants like the millions of
others who have arrived here seeking a better material life.
Those who came after the 1959 revolution were political exiles.
In the context of the Cuban-American experience, the “functional
difference” is huge.

Rubio placed his family among the latter group when he
emotionally told their story on the stump and in his campaign
literature. This narrative was false, and it raises fundamental
questions about his truthfulness.

Rubio’s friends and supporters in Miami’s Little Havana
don’t care about the episode. But Hispanic economic immigrants
could react differently if they see him as a pull-up-the-ladder
guy. They have long envied and even resented political exiles
because exiles are welcomed into the U.S. with open arms and
allowed to settle here permanently. To learn that Rubio’s family
was actually little different than the millions of immigrants
seeking economic opportunity -- the same ones that Rubio and
other Republicans now say deserve no “amnesty” -- might not go
down so well.

War with Univision

It doesn’t help that the senator now seems to be at war
with the most powerful force in Hispanic media -- Univision,
which has the largest Spanish-language audience in the country.
In July, Univision aired a story about the drug arrest 24 years
ago of Rubio’s brother-in-law. It was a meaningless tabloid
report with no impact on Rubio’s political standing. But the
senator handled it badly.

His staff told reporters that Univision had offered to kill
the story in exchange for Rubio appearing on the network’s
Sunday show. Even if true, that hardly justified the next step.
Rubio’s surrogates demanded that Univision’s president of news
resign and that the Republican presidential candidates boycott
the Jan. 29 Univision debate on the eve of the Florida primary.
(Telemundo, owned by NBC, will sponsor a debate instead.)

The boycott will conveniently allow the presidential
candidates to avoid being confronted by Univision’s lead news
anchor, Jorge Ramos, a fierce advocate of immigration reform who
is also wildly popular in the Hispanic community. Imagine if
President Barack Obama was feuding with a combination of Bryant
Gumbel, Al Sharpton and Oprah Winfrey. Might cost him a little
with black voters.

None of this is likely to dissuade the eventual Republican
nominee from picking Rubio if he thinks it will help him win the
White House. But will it?

(Jonathan Alter is a Bloomberg View columnist and the
author of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” The opinions
expressed are his own.)